Sabin Wine Journeys

July 10, 2025.   Wolf Gap Vineyard and Winery is among a small pod of wineries located near the towns of Edinburg and Mt. Jackson in Shenandoah County.   While the winery has been around since 2004, current owners Janel and J.C, Laravie purchased the property in 2021 and have invested greatly here since then.   There are new production facilities in a renovated barn and a new indoor tasting room occupying space that the old production equipment used to cramp.   Finally, they added a new outdoor pavilion that we’ll get to in a moment.   We had a chance to sit down with the Laravie’s and their winemaker, David Lambert.     Right to Left: Janel, Jethro (the winery dog), JC, David, Roger. The mountain hump over Janel’s head marks Wolf Gap. The Laravie’s own a marketing business - Chacka Marketing – in Tampa, Florida.   But the location in the Virginia mountains was a coming home of sorts for both Janel, who is from West Virginia, and JC who hails fr...

July 10, 2025.   Our first stop on this year’s trip to Shenandoah Valley is to the winery that started it all back in 1976, the first winery in the Valley – Shenandoah Vineyards in Edinburg.   This is also the second oldest active winery in the Commonwealth.   Jim and Emma Randel started the winery after relocating from New Jersey to Emma’s family property in Shenandoah County in 1974 so that Jim could recuperate from a heart attack.   They began with seven and a half acres of vines in 1976.   They repurposed the ground floor of an old Civil War-era barn as their production plant; its stone foundation kept a stable coolness.   Upstairs they opened their tasting room to the public in 1979.   The barn is still in use today although the front staircase from the main parking area is, fittingly, densely overgrown in twined grape vines.  Jim Randel passed away in 1985 and left Emma to run the property on her own, which she did with great success. ...

February 18, 2023.   It was Kim’s idea to depart from our plans to visit Lake Anna Winery in Spotsylvania, and what a bit of good luck it was.   Lake Anna Winery is located, as the name implies, just three miles from the resort lake.   The winery is in a 1940’s converted and structurally reinforced dairy building situated among the vines that slope gently downward to the woods.   The tasting room is medium sized single barn-like room with lots of activity and noise.   At one end there is a gas fireplace and a comfy sofa.   At the other end is a two-station tasting bar.   Outside there are picnic tables looking over the vines.   There’s not much food selection here, so plan to bring your own.   Families are welcome and were having a good time strolling between the rows of dormant vines.      Bill and Ann Heidig first planted grapes on their farm in 1983 and first released wine in 1990, making it one of the older Virginia win...

  Windridge Vineyards.   November 7, 2021.   The Manifesto for this Blog states that our travels are “mostly” in Virginia.   However, after reading an article in a recent Washington Post about wineries close to Washington, DC, Kim and I ventured across the river to Darnestown, Maryland, to visit Windridge Vineyards on a crisp Sunday morning. First, a note about Maryland wineries.   Although Maryland and Virginia share much in their historical development, they appear to have diverged in the 1980’s.   Virginia   took a path resulting in a more robust wine industry now than Maryland.   I believe that Maryland wine traces its start back to the 1640’s and followed a similar path as Virginia. In 1979, Maryland had seven operating wineries while Virginia, a state around four times larger, famously had only six wineries.   But in 1979-80, Virginia enacted its farm winery legislation allowing wine sales at the source (see, Bureaucracy page). ...